Anybody have any boat issues related to the freeze in February? Have a bass boat, ski boat, and jet ski on Conroe, all with covers on them that sit on slings in the boat house every winter and don't get used often when summer is over. Don't think anybody has touched them since September. House is on a North shoreline so we should have been fairly protected from the north wind with all the trees on the property. We checked out the house after the freeze and all was good, but didn't even think about the boats at the time.....headed up there tomorrow and wondering if we will have all kinds of problems. Our plan was to fire everything up and let them idle in the slings for 20 minutes or so while checking gauges/engine compartments. We do not do any sort of winterizing other than filling up fuel tanks and adding stabilizer and that seems to work for the past 15 years. Typically have to charge up the batteries first but that is a given.

thanks in advance....

Lower units might have split if you have them tilted up. Livewell pump housings tend to split too.

Lucky me no, I was afraid I would but haven't so far.

Hopefully that ski boat is not a raw water cooled inboard. If so I would guess that the block is cracked. Other than that its checking lower units, bilge and livewell hoses and fittings. Just give all the lower units an inspection. If its busted it's usually not hard to see. Be a sizable crack. No idea on the jet skis.

Even if an inboard engine has a closed cooling system (which is typical), there is a heat exchanger where the lake-water and coolant water make the heat transfer. If lake water was trapped in that heat exchanger, it would be susceptible to freezing, which can destroy it.

Hopefully your lower units were tilted down so that they did not catch and hold rainwater. Trapped water in an elevated lower unit in a freeze can be a death sentence to a lower unit. Put some water in the bass boat livewells via bucket or water hose before you lower the hull into the water. (the bilge should be dry if you do it this way.) If water doesn't show up in the bilge after putting water in the livewells, run the recirculate pumps and watch the open drain for the boat. Do a visual of the bilge if you can see it easily. It should still be dry after running livewells. Watch for a split speedometer pitot hose if you have that type speedometer (the most common). You might notice water spewing from somewhere (under dash or elsewhere) if this hose has frozen and split.

Make sure to lower them into the water before starting them. On the slings is not gonna get adequate water to cool the motors.

My water pressure gauge froze and messed it up to where the needle was stuck on max. It didn’t bust and wasn’t leaking but I had to replace it.

come'on man!!!! LOL....yes we can drop them enough to run motors while the lifts are still holding them in place.
Outboard is always stored with motor trimmed down all the way. As for the speedometer on the bass boat, it's an 2005 nitro 911 CDC and there is a tiny hole on the front of the skeg/lowerunit area that picks up the speed....it has been clogged for years. we just use the GPS speedometer.
No clue on the cooling system of the ski boat but I am pretty sure it is raw water cooled since it dumps a lot of H20 out the exhaust like the sport fisher does. Think it has a Vortec 350 in it like the Chevy trucks.
jet ski....who knows! it floated off during Harvey and ended up in someone's front yard 2 miles away. Got impounded via a wrecker service and we had to go get her....that was fun.

This. All day long.

I guess you don't understand what a heat exchanger is. They also exhaust water back into the lake. Many inboard or I/O boats have them. There's a closed cooling system on the engine, hopefully with antifreeze in it, or the engine block could split also. That cooling system needs to get rid of heat. On a car, that's done with the air-cooled radiator. On a boat, that is done with a "heat exchanger". Lake water is brought in with an engine driven pump. That water goes through a box where the closed system has tubes for cooling. Then that water is exhausted back into the lake - but it never went through the engine. What can freeze and cracks is the heat exchanger assembly. It's part of what's under the hood with the engine. It might be handy to learn a bit more about how your boats work as such knowledge can come in handy in recognizing when something is wrong, and what it may be.

Well....ya never know who your talking to. Hahahaha.

99% chance everything is ok.

You brought up another point of failure I had not thought about. I think some of them are electric now, with a sensor on the outboard.

yup....I know what a heat exchanger is and does....guess I worded it wrong...... i'll check it all out and hopefully we are good to go. If not sounds like it could be expensive!!!
new boat...new boat...new boat...LOL

You may get lucky as the boat has been out of the water since September. If the heat exchanger drained, or any trapped water had time to dry up, you'll be OK. I'm close to the lake, and it got REALLY cold up here, so if there was a chance in the last 20 years of boat freezing, it would be this event. My sister who lives elsewhere allowed a bf to winterize her boat one year vs. pay a service guy as she had normally done. That year, her repair bill was over $3000 for the freeze damage!

yup....that what my brother and I are hoping for....the fact that they have been out of the water for 6 months hoping that everything was dry/evaporated out.
we will find out tomorrow!